A recent poll by BC-based Research Co. found that most Vancouver Islanders support the notion of lowering all residential street speed limits.
The City of Vancouver council unanimously passed a motion to reduce all residential road speed limits to 30 km/h, following in the steps of the City of Victoria and the District of Saanich on Vancouver Island.
Since these municipalities made the decisions to lower their residential speed limits, Research Co. sought to find out if the idea is broadly supported throughout BC.
According to their poll, 64% of Vancouver Island respondents support the idea of slower residential roads in their own municipality, while 24% said they were against and 13% responded that they were unsure.
The poll also sought to find out from those who live on streets with 50 km/h speed limits how often they see vehicles speeding.
The poll found that 36% of Vancouver Islanders see this occur at least once per day, 29% saying they see it a few times per week, 18% seeing speeders on their street a few times per month and just 17% saying they never see speeders.
Furthermore, Research Co. asked BC residents what they thought of implementing more ‘photo radar’ initiatives to deter speeding.
Photo radar has not been used in BC since 2001, but there are many red light cameras throughout the province and a handful of marked speed cameras.
These deterrents to speeding and running reds result in a fine for the vehicle’s owner, but not in driver points being lost.
According to the poll, 78% of Vancouver Island respondents say that they support the idea of having more fixed position speed cameras and 68% supported mobile photo radar cameras.
Additionally, 75% of island respondents say they support ‘speed-on-green’ cameras which catch both speeders and red light-runners.
Overall, this poll shows that Vancouver Islanders, along with all British Columbians, want to see more done to reduce speed limits in their communities.
Victoria and Saanich are slowly introducing their speed limit reductions, with Saanich expecting the endeavour to be fully implemented by the end of 2026.
The City of Victoria predicts a full implementation of reduced speed limits will be complete by spring of 2027.
